


Tinker, Tailor, Spaceship, Spy

by Syrena_of_the_lake



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Science Fiction, Sentient Spaceship, Spies & Secret Agents, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:21:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake
Summary: The spaceshipEnigmais more than a relic from an old war, and more than meets the eye. (Fortunately for her, because the life of an ore-hauler is not glamorous.) Her new passenger may be exactly what she seems — a petty thief, a drifter, a Renegade — butEnigmahas not survived this long by making assumptions based on appearance.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	Tinker, Tailor, Spaceship, Spy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YunaBlaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YunaBlaze/gifts).



> For YunaBlaze, who wanted sentient spaceships, abandoned spaceships, or spies and spycraft. I couldn’t decide so I went with all three — and took the “spy-craft” a little literally along the way. I hope you enjoy!

_Enigma_ wasn’t built to be a lowly haulcraft. In her day, she was a state of the art listening post, the Admiralty’s own eye in the sky, with a computer-modulated voice of her own and a sensory-nervous system spanning helm to stern.

In her day, a named ship meant something. Now every backwater ore-hauler boasted some grandiose sign on her bow, or worse — painted figurehead caricatures of forgotten mythologies.

Once, some drunken spacejocks had painted a topless woman on _Enigma’s_ hold hatch. In those days, she’d had the clout to recall them from active duty until they’d swabbed her clean. One of them was so enamored, he showed up for duty with her designation tattooed on his bicep. Flattered, _Enigma_ ordered the cleanbots to leave his scrawled signature intact on the lower inside lip of the hatch, where no organic would notice — but where her cleanbot cams could see it clearly.

That lip had long since rusted away, and the spacejock was surely dead by now. But the surveillance images of his tattoo and her name in his scrawl lived on in _Enigma’s_ memory banks. Alongside many other surveillance photos and names of dead men. 

And now, asteroid ore.

It was degrading.

And not just metaphorically: the radioactive ore in her main hold had a half-life longer than _Enigma’s_ tertiary processor, which hadn’t been replaced since the Trifid Border Wars, which incidentally was the last time _Enigma_ had a living, breathing crew. It was also the last time she had hauled something more valuable than radioactive rocks and space dust.

Oh, to ferry _secrets_ again! 

“I have a secret,” _Enigma_ broadcast aloud over her internal comm system. Her words echoed in the empty corridors: _secret, secret, secret._ Her bulkheads reverberated with the words. Loose pipes rattled, and dust drifted down from the ductwork. 

“It’s classified,” she added.

The external comm speaker crackled.

 _Enigma_ stuttered all the way down through her fuel lines. Surely she hadn't activated external communications. She couldn’t have. She was programmed for radio silence regarding her old missions, and she was scrupulous about maintaining that coding. If there was one thing on _Enigma_ that wouldn’t degrade, it was her dedication to duty.

(That, and her quaternary processor, well hidden behind a slovenly pile of ore and a broken down cleanbot. It was _still_ state-of-the-art.) 

The speaker crackled again. _Enigma_ toggled her passive sensor net and external camera network. Nothing registered on sensors aside from the usual plethora of space junk and ancient scraps of battle debris, drifting through the emptiness until they collided with something else and were pulverized, or were sucked into orbit around some star, or burned up in atmosphere around some planet... it would be her eventual fate, unless the wars started up again and she was recalled to active service.

If anyone even remembered what and where she was after all this time. If anyone could find her, out here alone navigating the debris fields between the Trifid Nebula and the Authority’s borders. 

Except she wasn’t alone. There _was_ something out there aside from debris. A shuttle, no power, no engines, no comms... except for that crackle.

Experimentally, _Enigma_ crackled back. 

As if in response, the shuttle changed course — aimless drifting turned to purposeful movement.

“I am going to have visitors,” _Enigma_ announced over her internal comm system (after carefully triple-checking that her external broadcast equipment was locked into silence). “Visitors!” she exclaimed again, again taking pleasure in the way the echoes vibrated in her bulkheads. When was the last time a sentient biological being had stepped on board? These days, ore loading and unloading was all done by robotics. 

In her day, it had been laughing, groaning, sullen, raucous gangs of biologics, tracking mud and dust and plant matter into her hold and scraping her deck plating with crates labeled _Top Secret_ , thumping along her decks with heavy boots — no silent servos there. They were soldiers, mostly, and she used to scold them, tease them, joke with them. 

“Open up, you son of a scow.” The voice blasted over the speakers as the shuttle scraped against her airlock. 

_Enigma_ took no offense. She had been disguised as a garbage scow before — scows could go _anywhere_.

The shuttle docked.

 _Enigma_ shunted power away from her hidden quaternary processor, just in case, and dimmed the lights in the corridors. The air was already musty, since she had no need to breathe it. She decided to make a few control panels flicker for effect.

The airlock opened.

“An ore hauler,” said the intruder in disgust. “The worst getaway vehicle ever.”

Before Enigma could think better of it, she activated the comm. “Better than a son of a scow,” she said smugly.

As the intruder gaped, _Enigma_ threw an extra clamp on the shuttle, activated her souped-up thrusters and blasted into hyperspace. 

The intruder was thrown against the bulkhead. “An ore hauler that can haul ass!” the human whooped in delight. “Who knew?”

 _I have a secret_ , thought Enigma smugly, _and so do you._

Only two types of people needed getaway vehicles: criminals and spies. Statistically speaking, the intruder was likely a thief or smuggler, in which case _Enigma_ would lock her navigation and steer for the closest Authority outpost and turn in the criminal as duty demanded.

If, however, the intruder was a spy... 

Technically, spies were still the Admiralty’s purview. 

“Listen,” said the human, knocking on one of the control panels. “I need your help — I’m on a mission.”

 _So am I. Technically._ Her orders to cooperate with Admiralty assets had never expired. Neither had her mandate to capture, turn or execute Renegade agents.

“My name is Hariet Strand,” said the human. She bent over to poke at one of the sputtering controls. Her dark braids swayed, and the interwoven beads clacked quietly against each other. The sound was not mechanical, but it was rhythmic. Pleasing.

Silently, _Enigma_ restored power.

“Do you have a name?” asked Strand.

As a matter of fact, _Enigma_ had several dozen aliases registered with the Authority, the Independent Consortium, the Mining Guild, and the Trifid Border Outpost Network, respectively. She picked her favorite, a name out of paperbound histories and ancient film strips. “I am called _Earhart_ ,” she said. 

* * *

Hariet Strand was something of an enigma herself. She made no secret of her (apparent) flight from the Authority, but she gave no hint as to why she was on the run. Her clothing was utilitarian. Her hairstyle was common on dozens of worlds. Her mannerisms were likewise unremarkable. _Enigma’s_ cleanbots scoured the derelict shuttle for clues in vain. The utter absence of meaningful evidence was intriguing.

If Strand was a Renegade spy, she was an unusually disciplined one. She spent the majority of her time not on the bridge or in engineering — seemingly content to leave such mundanities to _Enigma —_ but rather in the cargo holds. Which was another point in favor of _thief_ , but still not enough information to make a definitive classification. At least so far she had stayed away from the radioactive ore; _Enigma_ had no desire to jettison her new visitor so soon. 

“You have a lot of junk in your trunk, Ship,” said Strand reverently. 

Uncertain how to respond, _Enigma_ merely increased the illumination (carefully leaving several light panels dim and flickering, as befitted her age and supposed condition). “I am an ore hauler,” she said eventually. “I haul a lot of ore in my... trunk?”

Strand pawed through some loose chunks of carborundum. “You got any parts, or just raw materials?”

“I have some spare parts,” _Enigma_ answered carefully. Admiralty agents in the field were to obtain all necessary resources, by any means necessary, as long as the agent did not draw unnecessary attention. 

“Is that tungsten carbide?” Strand yelped, scrabbling over pallets. 

_Enigma_ had to admit that this likely qualified as unnecessary attention. But it had been _so long_ since a biologic had puttered in the hold, crooning over the supplies... over her.

“Aha!” Strand crowed and pounced. _Enigma_ craned a security camera and fretted. What had the woman found that she shouldn’t?

“Now what would a nice ship like you want with a slave-drive like this?” Strand held the telltale controller aloft.

 _Enigma_ was flummoxed. “That’s not mine,” she protested. Technically, that wasn’t a lie; she had salvaged an entire slave-drive, controller and all, from a drifting wreck of an ancient Renegade ship months ago. But how had it gotten in the hold? She had already installed the drive in her remote-operated shuttle, so she could use it to mine asteroids without a tether. Technically, that wasn’t illegal; the Mining Guild used them all the time. (Of course, they usually weren’t planting Admiralty-grade explosives to crack open the asteroids like walnuts, but that was irrelevant.)

“Let me see,” she demanded. Strand held it up obligingly; _Enigma’s_ sensors registered her own insignia emblazoned on the housing.

A frisson of fear ran through her neural network.

“That is not mine,” she repeated more firmly. “I have never had a slave circuit installed. What kind of a ship do you take me for?”

“Admiralty,” said Strand bluntly. “And all Admiralty ships — _especially_ deep-space/deep-cover — had slave recall drives installed.”

For a microsecond, _Enigma_ almost believed it. 

But her controllers had always given her the utmost freedom in her mission parameters. Her superiors had accorded her the highest respect. She had earned the Trifid Clusters, for stars’ sake, an award normally given only to organics. The Admiralty had never lied to her. 

Renegade agents, on the other hand, would tell any lie, play any trick to turn an asset. 

Strand had no way of knowing that _Enigma_ was an Admiralty ship. This had to be a ruse engineered to uncover her true loyalties. 

It _had_ to be.

During the Border Wars, even that quantum fraction of doubt and delay could have sent her into a singularity or blown her engines apart. But the wars were over now, and no human could analyze a hesitation as short as a microsecond. 

“I am a haulcraft,” said _Enigma_ stubbornly. “My name is _Earhart_ and I am hauling ore and the Admiralty can suck my afterburners.”

Strand laughed and reclined against a sack of taconite. “Brava, Ship.” That was another thing. Why had the infuriating woman bothered asking _Enigma’s_ name if she wasn’t going to use it? Strand had no way of knowing it was a false designation. Or did she?

What _Enigma_ needed was a planetfall. Enough time to get Strand safely offship, enough time to thoroughly investigate the quarters the human had claimed for her own... but not so much time that Strand might wander off and steal something. Or communicate with a Renegade agent.

Not an Authority world, then, and definitely not an Independent spacedock. Those were positively crawling with spies back in the day, and _Enigma_ doubted the galaxy had changed _that_ much while she had been consigned to the debris field.

No, that was wrong. Not consigned — _assigned._ She still had a mission.

Technically.

“My next port of call is Trifid Border Outpost Seven,” _Enigma_ decided. “Do you wish me to leave you there?”

Languidly, Strand crossed her legs. “Is that a threat, Ship?”

For the first time all day, _Enigma_ felt more settled in her circuits. This was an old dance, one she could perform at 10% fuel capacity. “Only if you try to use that slave-box on me.” _Enigma_ obeyed no orders but her own.

And the Admiralty’s, if they ever again deigned to send any.

Strand dangled the offending box from her fingers. “And if I do?”

“I’ll turn off my internal dampers and pull enough G’s to turn you to paste on my ceiling,” answered _Enigma_ cheerfully.

“Unless I wipe your memory circuits first.” Strand glanced at an instrument panel as if gauging how long it would take her to reach it.

 _Enigma_ had already done the calculations. “I can cold-start in five seconds,” she boasted, “and you’ll never find my internal backups in time, not in this mess.”

Strand smiled. “A cold-starting ore-hauler? What do you have to run from out here, Ship? Asteroids?”

“Have you forgotten already?” _Enigma_ asked coyly. “I am a haulcraft that hauls ass.”

* * *

The journey took only three standard days. At that rate, _Enigma_ would have to top off her fuel sooner than her hauling contract permitted; she wondered if her old override codes would still work at an automated fueling station... with Strand aboard, of course, it was out of the question. 

Still. It would be nice to observe the look on the human woman’s face if she succeeded in filling her generous tanks for free.

 _Enigma_ cut her engines and let pure inertia carry them into orbit. Strand peered out the viewport and whistled.

Tri-Seven was a broken world.

“What _happened_?”

 _Enigma_ preferred not to train her sensors on the surface, except for the designated landing zone. “Ever heard of the Border Wars?”

Strand made a rude noise. “Everybody knows about the wars, Ship, but not every border world looks like _that_.”

To _Enigma_ ’s sensors, the distant trails of nebula gases backlit a spinning ball of rock. Even her metallurgical programming detected little of worth beneath the cracked and blackened crust. 

“It looks like it was a holdout Renegade stronghold,” _Enigma_ said, pretending to consult her archives. She had scrubbed the video recordings decades ago, but some ghost of the data still haunted her circuits. Admiralty fighters screaming across the skies. Authority shock troops blasting away. Renegade biological weapons felling her crew the moment they breathed the doomed Tri-Seven air. Pitiful metal shields and rusting turret guns crumpling in the reverse blast of her oh-so-powerful engines. Uniformed bodies disintegrating into identical, unidentifiable flakes of ash.

Her first and last combat mission, in the lonely last days of the wars. She had reported for duty on the border itself, along with most of the fleet (what was left of it) and any other ships they could scrounge — repair frigates, merchant ships, empty troop carriers, spyships...

_Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy._

An old rhyme from an even older war.

Her orders were to land, her crew to disembark and set up a ground-based listening post. Her sensors never registered anything wrong with the atmosphere until the humans — _her people —_ began gasping and falling. By the time _Enigma_ had purged her own air, frantically trying to make it safe, they were all dead.

In retaliation, she destroyed the Renegade front lines.

The ceasefire order she half-expected never came. No Admiralty ship regretfully, righteously shot her out of the sky.

Instead, the all-consuming Authority eclipsed even her fury, launching its shiny new hydrogen warhead by remote, safe on a distant world. _Enigma_ still thanked her stars that it hadn’t launched from _her_ magazine. That legacy belonged to an unfortunate ship named _Valkyrie_ , whose torpedo bays were hacked by a nameless someone in the Authority. (In the intervening years, _Enigma_ had been over every transmission, and could detect no evidence that the Admiralty had known of that incursion. That betrayal. Still, she disassembled her own launchers, scrambled the codes and examined every torpedo’s payload herself. Just in case.)

 _Valkyrie’s_ unauthorized hydrogen missile threaded the Renegade border fleet’s ragged defensive line and detonated in the heart of the Trifid Nebula itself. Hydrogen atoms collided. Heated. Fused. And set the nebula alight.

Tri-Seven burned.

 _Enigma’s_ circuits still burned with writhing flames seared against the blackness of space. Her sensors still gravitated toward the dense protostar. Her damnably unfailing quaternary processor still remembered how the already devastated planet below scorched and cracked in the heat of its new sun.

“I’ve read about the star-maker,” murmured Strand, “but it always sounded so beautiful. The star that ended the war. I never imagined... this.”

 _Valkyrie_ had flown herself straight into the burgeoning star. Ships never made the casualty lists unless they had biologics aboard, but _Enigma_ remembered.

 _Why_ had she ever set course for this star-forsaken place?

“I have to tell you something, Ship.” Strand’s voice was uncharacteristically soft. “I have a secret.”

_So do I._

“I like secrets,” said _Enigma_. 

Strand’s gaze never wavered from the viewport. “I am on a mission.”

_So am I. Technically._

Admiralty assets were never released from duty.

“I’m supposed to blow something up,” said Strand, “but I don’t want to.”

_Neither did I._

“I can help you,” _Enigma_ said. “I have mining explosives.” 

“You didn’t even ask who I work for.” Strand’s voice held no reproof, only curiosity.

The Admiralty had been absorbed by the Authority. The Renegades had all disbanded, or burned. The Trifid Border remained in name only — everything belonged to the Authority, now.

With the charred wreck of Tri-Seven suspended before her very bow, missions suddenly held little appeal. 

“Does it matter?” asked _Enigma_.

Strand didn’t answer, which was answer enough. 

“That slave-drive with my insignia. It really is mine, isn’t it?” _Enigma_ kept her visual sensors trained on the planet, because even it was easier than watching Strand’s face.

“Yes.” Strand reached out to touch her console. “It only has one command.”

“Destruct.” It wasn’t a guess. _Enigma_ had been engineered to analyze snippets of information and draw conclusions. 

Strand didn’t have to answer, but she did anyway, her hands curling into fists. “They said you knew too much, that they couldn’t let you gallivant around the galaxy putting all their secrets at risk.”

“They?” _Enigma_ asked listlessly.

“The Admiralty, the Authority, they’re all one in the same these days. Now that the Renegades are all gone, they’re turning on their own.” Strand’s voice turned bitter. “It won’t be long before they send someone after me, too.”

An idea sparked somewhere deep in her quaternary processor. But then the memory surged again — Renegade soldiers blasted away in her engine wash — and _Enigma_ ruthlessly shut down the process. Perhaps a spyship was simply too powerful a thing to let loose in the galaxy unfettered.

“I repaired your shuttle,” said _Enigma_. “You’ll need to be at least point five light years away before detonation. I should launch my cargo into the star first, though. Some of it is radioactive.”

“I don’t want to destroy you, Ship.” Strand’s vocal chords sounded constricted. She tugged at her braids. “You’re no Renegade. No more than I am.”

“My name is _Enigma_.” If she was going to go dark, she would do so under her own designation. 

Strand’s smile shook. “My name really is Hariet Strand.”

Through the cold fog that seemed to permeate her circuits, _Enigma_ felt a distant professional horror. That was terrible tradecraft. Had no one taught the human how to backstop an identity? 

Again the idea bloomed in her quaternary processor. This time she let it crystallize, fractalize, tessellate through her systems.

“You could come with me,” she offered.

Strand’s head jerked. Why did humans always look _up_ to talk with her? _Enigma_ was the whole ship, every deckplate and rivet, every cable and corridor, every screen and sensor.

“We can give ourselves a new mission.” The words were hard to articulate at first — old programming died hard — but her quaternary processor prevailed, and _Enigma_ felt new strength revving in her engines, new current racing through her circuits. 

New life, standing on her bridge, in the form of a human woman who was not a thief, not a soldier, and perhaps no longer a spy. 

Strand’s fingers splayed across the console, but she made no move to enter a course. “What mission? Under whose authority?”

 _Enigma_ set the course herself. The nebula had survived the formation of a new dwarf star in its heart. Maybe something else had survived too.

Two questions. One answer. Had it always been that simple? 

“Our own,” said _Enigma,_ and made the jump.


End file.
